


Thoughts of Slytherin

by RiaZ



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Battle of Hogwarts, Gen, Own Character, Prejudice, Slytherin, Slytherin Pride
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-15
Updated: 2018-11-25
Packaged: 2019-08-24 06:15:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,681
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16634531
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RiaZ/pseuds/RiaZ
Summary: “The dungeons will do.”A few Slytherin's worlds collapsed at those words, at how the rest of the school cheered upon hearing them.But it was alright - they would do exactly what they always had done.They'd use whatever tools that they had to get what they wanted, and destroy the rules that were in their way.





	1. Elain Whist

“The dungeons will do.”

The rest of the school cheered when the words were said.

But Elain Whist stayed silent. As did her house, shuffling behind her back – as if they were guilty, as if they were to blame for not wanting to throw jinxes and curses at their family.

Distantly, she could hear Filch beginning to shepherd them out, and the stunned state that she was in broke. Broke so violently that she was surprised that no one heard it, that no one questioned why her jaw squared and eyes blazed. 

Her eyes found Minerva McGonagall in front of her – and the transfiguration teacher did not look surprised to see the declaration of war written in them. 

“That includes you, Miss Whist.”

Elain had been made Head Girl this year. 

She had done all she could to keep her house safe – because even though their Slytherin name bought few students safety and granted them small mercies, it was not often enough. She had organized patrols with other house’s prefects, had given multiple excuses to the teachers to help the younger students get away without being tortured. She had played the dangerous game of chase with the Carrows, had pretended to throw curses at the first-years – had told them to pretend to scream, too. 

_That includes you, Miss Whist._

No, it did not. 

It did not include anyone.

The school had descended into a bundle of murmuring, jabbering nerves. Elain watched Harry Potter throw words at McGonagall, who nodded her respect. She was not surprised – he was Gryffindor embodied, that boy. 

She’d just have to be Slytherin, then.

She stormed up to the teacher that had cold calculation in her eyes, just as Elain ensured that she had cunning. “I must begin organizing the ones that will fight,” the Professor said, raising an eyebrow. Elain heard the unspoken jibe – the jibe towards her house. “If you would accompany the rest of your housemates back to your dormitory.”

“I will,” Elain said. “But I will take the younger students with me. I don’t care what house they are – they will come with us. You are not expecting the children to fight – and I think you’ll find that we Slytherins are good at being cunning enough to help others flee. Tell the students to follow us to our dormitory; the dungeons will be one of the last places that the Death Eaters will reach. They won’t expect the children to be there.”

Elain had the good sense of feeling insulted when McGonagall blinked in confusion. “We – we cannot trust that our Headmaster will not know the password –“

“We will change the password,” Elain snapped. “I know how. The older Slytherins will protect them with all that they have.” 

McGonagall drew herself up, her beady eyes already sweeping the hall. Elain thanked any higher power watching over her that there were only little students this year – they’d all fit into the common room. “Well, Goodness knows that you older Slytherins have had plenty of practice casting curses this year.”

Elain felt it then. 

The sweeping feeling of being judged, the twisting of her stomach. But she’d be damned if she let that be the last say. “And I thought you were so eager for our expertise when you were expecting us to fire them at our parents.” 

McGonagall opened her mouth, eyes flaring in temper, but Elain had had enough. She beckoned to the prefects of each house – all well acquainted with each other after the hours spent together, protecting their children. 

McGonagall didn’t realize that there weren’t houses anymore. 

Just children, and those willing to use different skills to protect them.

The prefects joined her at the front of the room, warily avoiding the needles that was McGonagall’s pointed stare, even as she called the teachers to the front of the room. “Elain, what’s going on?” The Ravenclaw prefect was a nice enough boy, but if there was one thing that he hated, it was not knowing what exactly was happening.

“They’re not going to allow anyone under the age of seventeen to fight, and we can’t risk sending people home – not on the train. The Death Eaters would have seen that coming a mile away; we can’t risk it anymore. Get your students. We’re going to the Slytherin common room to bunker down.”

It was a mark of how desperate they all were that none, not even the Gryffindor prefects, protested.

***

Elain stood out in the corridor just outside her common room, overseeing the efforts to make everyone as comfortable as they could be. 

She’d sent select, trusted people out for supplies – for more blankets, for water, for information. But even though common sense told her that it was surely them coming back, turning around the bend and coming forward, every single noise sounded all alarms in her head. 

Curses were ready on her tongue, and her wand hadn’t left her hand. 

The wall concealing the vast room beyond hadn’t been sealed yet – not when there were still people to come back from their errands. Elain heard the whispers behind her and dared look. 

On any other day, what she saw would have warmed her heart. 

Children were sprawled everywhere – on the couches, perched on the edge of the fireplace where a few Hufflepuffs were coaxing flames into being, lying on the floor on the many mattresses that the Slytherins had dragged from their beds to cover the floor. Ravenclaws were looking up at the glass ceiling that protected them from the lake, a few whisperings of awe as mermaids swam by. Elain didn’t have the heart to tell them that ordinarily, the mermaids might have stopped. Might have performed a dance or two.

But instead, the merpeople clutched various battle weapons and didn’t have the time to spare a second glance at the mystified students below. 

The Slytherins had clustered around the edges, keeping their heads down. There was nowhere they could go to hide their shame of being branded cowards in front of the whole school – even their own rooms had been opened up to house people of all coloured ties, and their possessions shared to ensure everyone’s comfort. 

Elain heard the scuffling and the odd dragging sound approaching and her heart clenched and steeled itself as she twisted around, her wand already flying into position.

“Easy!” A boy called, holding a hand up. 

Three people approached, lugging a trolley behind them. Elain soothed her breathing as she scanned their faces and ties – the Gryffindor and Slytherin prefects had returned. They were the last due back – but Elain scowled as she realized what they’d brought.

“A muggle television?” She hadn’t taken muggle studies – hadn’t wanted to, after a teacher had raised a questioning eyebrow as a Slytherin asked about it. But Elain knew well enough what the clunky, ugly thing was – and that it was not the water she’d asked them for. 

“We’ve got water too, relax,” the Gryffindor girl grinned at her. She looked at him incredulously. “It’s in the trolley below the TV.” 

“We thought that the kids would want something to relax them,” the Slytherin girl shrugged. “Liz thought that a TV would be the way to go – so we stole one from the Muggle Studies classroom.” 

Elain let her temper go. “You’re back safely,” she said, and the two prefects grinned diabolically as they realized they weren’t going to get scolded. “Get in and get that thing working, I suppose. Then organize registers and rotas for the prefects to keep watch. I want two on alert for an hour, at most – then switch out.”

“Yes, marm,” the Gryffindor girl saluted. “What will you be doing?”

“I’m going to change the password and start protective enchantments.” Elain said it with more conviction than she had – her aptitude was more transfiguration than charms. “I’ll patrol out here and check in every now and again.” 

The Slytherin prefect gave her a sad look. “What if we’re attacked?”

Elain looked down at her wand. “We’re Slytherin. We’ll do what we’ve always done.” The Gryffindor prefect looked vaguely unnerved as the other gave him a charming smile. Elain huffed a ghost of a laugh and finished her sentence. “We’ll use whatever tools at our disposal to get what we want – and shatter all of the rules that block the way.”

***

At the beginning, things were bad – but not unmanageable.

More than once, Elain had tried to stop a few of the younger students from sneaking out to help. Mostly Gryffindors, but a few of the other houses as well. Hufflepuffs not willing to merely be idle whilst they knew their friends were fighting, Ravenclaws who couldn’t stand knowing they could be helpful, Slytherins who had decided that the judgement and shame of their classmates was somehow worse than fighting their family. 

Most begrudgingly went back inside – to watch another film (“Disney?” Elain had wondered to herself after hearing a few excited murmurs about it) or to soothe their siblings. Others had been craftier, waiting until Elain had been in the middle of casting another tricky disillusionment charm down the corridor to run for the chance to fight.

She knew that she’d failed in keeping them all in as she checked the registers that the prefects were diligently keeping, marking the names that she’d failed at keeping safe. 

Colin and Dennis Creevey were among them, and she hoped that their bravery was enough to help them live.

The Slytherins had slowly integrated into the sprawl of other houses, tentatively asking to share a blanket or offer a burnt marshmallow. Soon enough, she could barely distinguish the differences – Slys and Puffs and Gryffs and Ravens simply merged together. 

Yes.

On another day, it would have warmed her heart.

***

But this day, a Slytherin girl had to break her heart the moment that she felt the castle’s protective shield crack and wither under the strength of the enemy’s spells. She brushed her hair into a tight braid at the back of her head and had waited. 

It hadn’t been long until she saw the first glint of battle.

'Protego' had become her favourite spell.

But it hadn’t been long until she’d been throwing curses without a second thought, hoping that it hit just so that the attacker wouldn’t hit back. She’d tried being sneaky, being merciful by throwing memory charms at first, powerful confundus charms – but all that had done was make her realize that she was merely prolonging the inevitable. 

Elain no longer allowed herself to try and figure out the names of the people coming for the common room behind her. 

They became faceless.

She was glad for it.

She was not her parents; in fact, there were several children in the dormitory behind her that were also not their parents, but were punished for it nonetheless. Elain was not her aunt, who hadn’t even needed the imperio curse to join Voldemort’s cause. She was not her cousin, who claimed that he would have been killed if he had declined the Deatheater’s advances. 

But the people that were rounding that corner could have been.

The Carrows had made her shout a variety of curses at various students – but she’d never done them right. She’d said the word, never meaning it, and had deliberately botched the hand movement so that the spells had never taken place. 

But now –

Now she meant the words she spat, and she revelled at the way that her hand movements were smooth, her wand a whip. She hid in the classroom just a few mere meters away from the wall that led to the most precious thing to her right now and sent jinxes and hexes to all those who thought they could break into the House that they’d once come from. 

She’d done all she could – charming the corridor to become invisible, transfiguring the floor into lava (a trick picked up from those infernal twins that had once been Gryffindor). 

Still, they kept coming.

Still, she kept fighting.

***

“Why are Slytherins the way that they are?”

Elain slumped against the wall and fixed the Ravenclaw girl with an exhausted stare. She’d lost count of the hours she’d been outside the wall – but the Head Boy had taken over now, shining lumos to signal their change. She hadn’t missed his expression of utter relief to find her alive – but as she’d told McGonagall, the dungeons had not been a priority for those attackers. She’d merely been defending it from the stragglers. 

She hoped the boy that had taken over would be alright.

“When I was first sorted, I was nothing but excited. A little scared, but excitement was coursing through my blood.” At her voice – thin, tired - the surrounding children shot each other glances, a few meek grins, a few cocked eyebrows. 

“What happened?”

“The hat had to argue for a bit,” Elain admitted. “But it sorted me into Slytherin, and I was proud – but then a couple of twins from Gryffindor booed me.”

The Gryffindors stayed silent – most likely knowing exactly who the twins that she referred to were. Most people did. 

“I didn’t really know what it meant, or why they’d done it. But those twins booed a first year without knowing her name or her age or her interests; they only knew my house, and that was enough for them.” Elain didn’t bother to feel sad about it now. “My house was angrier about it than I was; I was just upset. But my prefects at the time spoke to all of us first-years, after our welcoming feast. When everyone else was getting a pleasant tour, being told about the great achievements about their houses, my prefects were warning us about the hatred of a school towards us, purely because of the colour of our ties. And then we decided that if they were going to hate us… We’d do what we always had done, as a house. We would use our skills to do as we pleased and break the rules that were in our way.”

At that moment, Elain could name exactly who was from Slytherin and who was not. 

The hardened faces, averted eyes, the instinctive grab towards ties that they’d long discarded. Those were hers.

The defensive biting of the lips, the glances to their fellows, the blinking at the common room that had become a safe place. 

Those were hers too – but she doubted they liked that as much.

“I’m going back out,” she said, standing from the cool marble steps. The children stirred, flinching again from an explosion that sounded worryingly close. Elain glared pointedly at a few who seemed inclined to follow her out and caught the eyes of the prefects that were in charge – sending a few winks, waggling her wand. 

As if she wouldn’t be using it to bring hell down on those that would attack what slowly, her children were trying to build here, in the common room of those hated. 

Elain Whist was not a Slytherin.

The moment she stepped out of that common room and resealed the wall, bidding a farewell to the fearful gazes of those behind it, she was nothing but a child.

A child willing to kill, but a child nonetheless.


	2. Daniel Rochester

“The dungeons will do.”

The rest of the school cheered when the words were said.

Daniel Rochester had to bite on his tongue to stop his lips riding up into a sneer, watching as the people around him were reduced to the villains – again. He thought he’d be used to it, by now. Six years he’d spent being degraded and told that he was the bad guy, stuck in a school that refused to see him as anything different. But no – it still pissed him off.

Was it really a surprise to anyone to find that most of the villains did originate from this house? 

Daniel supposed that if anyone told a house that they were nothing but evil bullies for long enough, they’d soon have no choice but to become it.

Distantly, he was aware that the Head Girl was storming towards the Gryffindor’s Head of House, the former with violence laced in her dark eyes. He was aware that the younger Slytherins were meekly following Filch out, tracing the path to their dormitory. 

Daniel was aware of it all.

But he just didn’t give a damn.

He followed his classmates out of the hall, his friends silent at his side, his lover’s hand grazing his own – but as soon as they were out of side of the hall, he turned on his heel and silently turned into a different corridor, his footsteps masked by the sounds of all the others in the Slytherin parade. His friends did not give a single hint to Filch that Daniel was no longer with them; their eyes found his, down the corridor, and only stiffened in their own resolve. His boyfriend’s eyes lined with tears, but Daniel could read the strength behind them.

If they were given half a chance, Daniel was sure that they’d follow him.

But he knew that they all had younger siblings – and in a house that valued traditionalism, siblings were as good as anchors in reality. 

He thought that he could just hide in a forgotten corner of a corridor until the battle got started – but then a mess of noise exploded from the Great Hall, and a jumble of students followed the Slytherin prefects, heading for the same route as the Slytherins before. 

Daniel supressed a smile at the sight of Elain ordering the prefects around – and the prefects obeying, no matter the colour of their tie. The younger students, it seemed, would be protected in the very dormitory of the house that they hated. 

With the number of students making it very possible that he’d be spotted and made to follow them, Daniel quietly snuck further down the corridor to climb the stairs to the highest floor – he didn’t know exactly where the Gryffindor or Ravenclaw common rooms were, but he wasn’t a fool. He knew they were at the top. And if they were now heading down to the Slytherin dungeons, it meant that the higher places would be easier to hide in.

That was his thought process until Ginny Weasley cannoned into him and nearly knocked him back down the stairs he’d been climbing.

***

“My damn mother,” the girl seethed, holding out a hand to help Daniel to his feet. He only accepted because the girl had been in all of the Gryffindor-Slytherin shared classes, and he knew exactly where her skills lay – in curses, jinxes and hexes. “Can you believe, she’s going to make me stay in the damn Room of Requirement and miss everything!”

“You’re telling me,” Daniel said, his voice full of dry humour even as he allowed the girl to help heave him to his feet, “they’re hiding their fiercest fighter in a room somewhere?”

Ginny shot him a conspirator’s wink as they set off together. Daniel didn’t know where the Room of Requirement was – but if it would keep him out of sight until the madness of the battle started, he’d happily follow. “We’re both underage, and this means that we’re incapable of firing jinxes. That’s typical Gryffindor logic, isn’t it – it doesn’t make sense, but it’s founded on some sort of stupid, pig-headed bravery.” 

Daniel snorted. He’d always liked Ginny - the storm given a human form, the pure fire hidden in the tiny girl. She didn’t particularly care about houses – the only thing she got mad about was whether you’d insulted her friends or beaten her at Quidditch. Daniel had made sure that he’d done neither, and the result was an odd co-existence that hadn’t gotten far enough to form a friendship, but he liked to think that neither would leave the other to die. 

“Where are you going?”

Ginny swore under her breath as some woman that Daniel had never seen in his life appeared from a door that – Daniel contemplated pinching himself – disappeared the moment that she closed it. “She’s Longbottom’s Grandmother,” Ginny hissed, before drawing herself up. “We’re heading to the Room of Requirement – my mother told me to stay there until the battle’s over.”

The woman looked down her hooked nose at Daniel. “And what about the Slytherin? Haven’t they sent all of those little snakes down to the dungeons?” 

Daniel kept his patience on a tight leash. It wouldn’t serve his purpose if he got himself exposed here. 

Ginny Weasley had no such reservations.

“Don’t you dare,” she snapped at the elderly woman. “It’s exactly that kind of attitude that’s gotten us into this mess in the first place.” 

“Now see here –“ the woman seethed, rage written in her very bones.

Daniel, ordinarily, would have paid to watch the destruction that Ginny would have brought down upon this woman who clearly did not know that rage had in fact been invented by the Gryffindor in front of her. But now was not the time, nor place. “Ladies,” he said, fighting to keep his tone away from the anger that was undoubtedly exploding in his blood. “I don’t have to go into the room if you don’t want. I didn’t even want to go into it in the first place.”

Ginny flicked her eyes to him silently, whilst the woman happily switched her anger back to him. “And what, exactly, were you hoping to do here?”

Daniel didn’t miss the way that the woman’s hand suddenly went into her pocket, where he had little doubt that a wand would be. 

“You think that Slytherins won’t fight because they have family that are now attacking,” he said. “And every single member of my family is part of the army.”

The elderly witch’s mouth tightened, and even Ginny’s eyes widened in warning. “Your point?” 

“My point - ” Daniel smiled. “I’ve wanted my great aunt Dorothy to be hexed since the first Christmas she celebrated with us, telling my sister and I about how she wanted to buy us muggles so that we could torture them. And now I can be the one to hex her. So, I am not going to allow my age, or my house stop me.”

Because that was what Slytherins did. They used whatever tools that they had to get what they wanted. 

And Daniel very much wanted his great aunt Dorothy to be brought down.

“Rest in peace, Dorothy,” Ginny muttered, her mouth tilting to a smirk. 

Daniel again faced the old witch that had, a few seconds ago, insulted him – and blinked in shock as she smiled.

“Rest in pieces, Dorothy,” she agreed.

***

A few hours later, Daniel couldn’t bring himself to regret his decision.

He’d fired more jinxes and curses in the past five hours than in the entire fourth year of Defence against the Dark Arts (not entirely impressive, he thinks, considering it was Umbridge who taught it that year) but he was impressed with himself nonetheless. 

After an hour in, he’d stopped caring about whether the people were related to him or not. 

He’d stopped scanning his attackers for his family’s black hair, or their dark skin. The irony of them being so adamantly racist towards the muggle-borns was not lost on him; but he had still hoped, foolishly, that they’d come around. All he knew was that he’d not encountered them – and he wasn’t yet sure if he was pleased or pissed about it. 

Daniel knew he was exhausted; the skin of his chest had probably been entirely reduced to bruises thanks to an explosion taking out a wall right next to him. His torso had been trapped between the debris of the wall and the floor for a good while – it was only because of a protective charm he’d casted on himself a few minutes prior that he’d managed stay alive. 

He’d found that if he acted dead, the attackers wouldn’t notice him lying there until it was too late. 

A serpent in the grass.

That’s exactly what he’d been – if the grass was the rubble and he’d had a few scales. 

It had gotten painful after a while – and Daniel didn’t doubt that he’d have the marks for a good long while after this entire war was over. It was only after he’d levitated the larger rocks and bricks away that he’d been able to breath properly again. But now that Voldemort had called off the battle for an hour, he was able to clear his thoughts from the murky mess of war and sort his mental state out.

He didn’t want to go back to the Great Hall, as he knew that everyone else was. 

He could tell what sort of scene would await him there – could predict how everyone’s eyes would follow him around, marking the green of his tie, their fingers not leaving their wands until after he’d gotten out of there. Daniel did not want to see the bodies that his family had left behind them in their path to a superficial, hateful version of purity. 

Instead, he made towards the one place that he knew he’d always be accepted.

But even as he made his winding way towards the dungeons, his heart was cold as he contemplated what he would find there. Endless amounts of ‘what if’s swam in his mind, and his mind played cruel tricks on him as it showed him the broken bodies of his friends, the boy who’s heart Daniel had won, the younger students who had done nothing but be sorted into a damn house –

“Daniel.”

He didn’t jump, or flinch – just raised his eyes to find the Head Girl kneeling beside the body of the Head Boy, tears leaving a track through the grime that was on her face.   
“Elain.”

“The common room is safe,” she murmured. Daniel winced at the sound of her voice, so alike to his own – hoarse after shrieking spells, after yelling for help, after screaming warnings. “The stragglers never wanted to murder their own house, so we didn’t see very much action.” Daniel knew she was lying – the body that she was crying for was proof enough that enemies had come here looking to kill. But he appreciated the effort to protect his mental state nonetheless. “The password is ‘Rapunzel’.”

Daniel barely raised an eyebrow.

“It’s one of the muggle films that the children have been watching,” Elain breathily laughed, even as more tears appeared. “I didn’t even know it was a word – so I thought it would be the perfect word. What Pureblood would even think of it as a password?”

Daniel nodded mutely as he walked around Elain, his dark eyes marking the tells of battle. There was still a patch of lava simmering underneath a bench (Elain had always been adept at transfiguration), a spatter of blood near a door (no sign of another body, though), or a patch he walked through that rendered his surroundings invisible for a mere moment (he didn’t panic; Disillusionment charms had been his new favourite thing since three hours ago).

He didn’t speak until he reached the wall that he knew led to his heart – and gave the password.

The children inside were shrieking along to a song being produced by a box that had been mounted on top of the marble fireplace, blankets and pillows strewn about. A few noticed him walking in but settled back into comfort immediately upon noticing his tie.

Daniel’s world – built on prejudice – started to crumble.

And he caught the eyes of his boyfriend – who seemed to be in the middle of teaching a few fourth years a new card game – and fell to his knees on the doorstep.

His lover didn’t say another word as he bolted across the room to kneel before him so that they were knee-to-knee and face to face. Daniel’s world collapsed completely into dust as he sobbed onto the shoulder of the boy that held his heart, and in that moment, he was nothing but a child.

A child who had killed, but a child nonetheless.


End file.
